Running proper CV fraud checks isn’t optional anymore, especially in finance and accounting roles, where you’re trusting someone with real money and real risk. When someone’s CV is the thing convincing you to hand them the keys to your ledgers, your payroll, or your client money, a padded qualification or a quietly rewritten job title isn’t a minor exaggeration — it’s a real risk. Here are five CV fraud checks worth building into every hire before you make an offer.
5 CV fraud checks to run before you hire
Verify qualifications directly with the awarding body
A candidate telling you they’re AAT or ACCA qualified isn’t the same as them actually being on the register. Most professional bodies, including AAT, ACCA, ICAEW and CIMA, offer a way to verify membership status directly, and it takes a few minutes. It’s a simple check, and one that’s easy to skip when everything else about a candidate looks strong — which is exactly when it matters most.
Look properly at employment gaps
A gap on a CV isn’t automatically a problem — people take career breaks, retrain, or care for family. But an unexplained gap deserves a straightforward question rather than an assumption either way. Ask directly, listen to the answer, and if something doesn’t add up against dates on references or qualifications, that’s worth following up rather than letting it slide.
Call references — don’t just email them
A written reference can be limited, generic, or in a worst case, entirely fabricated using a contact who isn’t who they claim to be. A phone conversation gives you far more: tone, hesitation, the things a referee is willing to say off the record that they’d never put in writing. If a candidate is only willing to offer personal or unverifiable references for a finance role.
Cross-check LinkedIn against the CV
Dates, job titles and responsibilities should broadly match across both. They rarely need to match exactly — people update one and forget the other — but a title that’s mysteriously more senior on the CV than on LinkedIn, or a role that’s missing entirely from one version, is worth a direct question in interview
Use a recruiter who actually knows the sector
This is where specialist recruitment earns its keep.
Someone who places finance and accounting professionals every week knows what a genuine progression through AAT to ACCA looks like. They also know what a plausible salary jump between roles looks like, and which job titles get used loosely versus which ones are protected.
If you’d like a second pair of eyes on a shortlist, or want these CV fraud checks done properly as part of the search from the outset, that’s exactly the kind of thing I build into every placement. Get in touch to talk through your next hire.
Heidi